Roofing in Boscombe

Slate on the older villas. A lot of Boscombe went up between the 1870s and the First World War, and many of the big villas around the chine and the cliff top carry natural slate. Slate itself lasts a very long time.

The nails holding it do not, and when they rust through the slates slip one at a time. A handful of slipped slates is a morning with a slate ripper and copper tingles. When a whole slope is sliding, we strip it, set aside every sound slate, fix new battens over a breathable membrane, and put it back with matched slate making up the shortfall. A single slope on a villa is days rather than weeks once the scaffold is up.

Clay tile and tile hanging. Churchill Gardens is known for its tile-hung gables, and clay plain tile turns up on plenty of the later Victorian and Edwardian houses. Plain tiles hang on their nibs with a nail every few courses, and after a century the nibs snap and the tiles slide. Tile hanging on a gable fails the same way and lets driven rain into the wall behind it. Later re-roofs and the blocks built since the turn of the century are mostly concrete interlocking tile, which is quicker to repair but heavier.

Chimneys, valleys and lead. A Boscombe villa can have four or five stacks, several valleys and a hip on every corner, and that is where the leaks are. Lead flashings, soakers and the back gutter behind a stack are dressed in new code rated lead, cut into lengths short enough to move without splitting. A valley that has been patched with mortar or tape comes out and goes back in lead.

Ridges, hips and verges. Mortar bedding on a ridge takes a beating from salt wind and gives up at the joints. We replace it with a dry fix ridge and dry verge, mechanically fixed, which is what BS 5534 expects and removes the part that cracks first.

Moss, gutters and the small flat roofs. Shaded slopes under the big trees collect moss and algae, and it washes down as debris into the gutter until the outlet blocks. Clearing it by hand is part of a repair visit, never a pressure washer, which drives water up under the laps. Plenty of what gets reported as a roof leak is a gutter running over, a downpipe loose at the wall, or a rotten fascia and soffit behind it. Bay tops, porches and dormer cheeks often carry a small flat roof in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, and it fails at the upstand or the outlet long before the middle.

When we would talk you out of it. A few slipped slates on an otherwise sound roof do not justify a re-roof, and a spray coating on the underside of old slate traps moisture and makes the slates impossible to reuse later. If someone has quoted either, get a second look. A single slipped slate, a stack letting water in or a leak you need traced is covered on our page for roof repairs in Boscombe. Flat roofs over rear extensions and shop back-additions have their own page: flat roofing in Boscombe.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: scaffold, the strip out, battens and membrane, the covering, each junction and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Boscombe has five conservation areas of its own: Boscombe Spa, Boscombe Manor, Churchill Gardens, Knole Road and Undercliff Road, and the council keeps the list. Inside one, re-slating in matching slate is a repair. Swapping slate for concrete tile, adding a dormer, or putting rooflights on the front slope is where the Planning Portal guidance stops helping, and converted flats have no householder permitted development at all. Renew more than a quarter of the roof and BCP building control is involved for the insulation, and we will tell you at the visit what that means.

Ring rather than use the form. The first visit is about making it safe and watertight so nothing gets worse while you decide, and we quote the permanent repair once the whole of it can be seen.

In a converted villa or a block, tell the managing agent as well as us, because the roof over your flat almost certainly belongs to the freeholder. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Boscombe runs right down to the sea. The villas above the chine and the houses along Boscombe Overcliff Drive sit a few hundred metres from the cliff edge, and every south-westerly carries salt onto their roofs. Salt does not hurt slate or clay.

It goes for the metal: the nails, the tile clips, the screws in a ridge system and the fixings in a lead flashing. A roof in Boscombe can look perfect from the road while what holds it down has rusted to nothing, and then the first proper gale takes a run of slates off in one go.

So on any roof within sight of the sea we fix in stainless steel or copper, clip every tile on the exposed slope, and dry fix the ridge and verges rather than trusting a mortar bed. It costs a little more on the fixings and it is written on the quote as its own line. Further back from the front, towards Springbourne and King's Park, the exposure drops away and the ordinary specification is usually fine. We will tell you which side of that line your house is on, and ask the same of anyone else quoting.

Nearby places we also cover for roofing, with straight-line distances from Boscombe, and the other trades we offer in Boscombe itself.

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